Monthly Archives: December 2018

But we’ve wandered many a weary foot

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Ah, 2018..we hardly knew ye…

At the end of 2017 I suspected that 2018 might be a gun-heavy year. It was. Just in terms of guns that I mentioned purchasing in the blog, I came up with six semi-auto rifles, a buncha  pistols, and three shotguns. And that just the ones you guys know about. So, yeah, a bit gun heavy. But, other than the Ruger .338 Lapua that Im on the fence about, the plan is to not get nearly as many guns.

Also scored around 60,000 of .22 LR which, as we’ve seen, is nice to have since you never know when the availability will plummet and the price will skyrocket.

Didnt need to use my AK this year, it was a good year.

No nuclear winter, depression, invasion, pandemic, alien attacks, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, blizzards, fuel shortages, or other end of the world events. Which is exactly how I like it. Even without those biggies, life still has a way of nailing you right in the sac… so I’ll take all the disaster-free time that I can.

2019? Well, gonna try like hell to make this the year the house is paid off. Once that’s done it’ll free up money for other things, including preparedness projects I’ve had on the back burner. Thats pretty much the biggest priority…getting that taken care of reduces a liability (and risk) in my  life, and affords me the opportunity to redirect those resources elsewhere. And, if the world (big or small) takes a dump on me, I’d at least have a paid for roof over my head.

Any other goals for 2019? Keep on keepin’ on, I reckon. Advancements my be small, but they are still movement forward. Stay alert, stay prepared, be ready for whatever may come…you know, the usual.

I very much need to get more money in the bank in case some sort of personal emergency (unemployment, illness, needing to fake my own death, etc) occurs. Life throws lotsa curve balls….childhood illness resurfacing and affecting your career, vehicles that decide to start shedding parts, outrageous tax increases by local municipalities, etc, etc. None of those are classic ‘end of the world’ scenarios but they can become ‘end of YOUR world’ scenarios if you aren’t ready.

All in all, though, 2018 could have been a lot worse. It wasn’t anything horrible, but it wasn’t a banner year either…it was just sorta there. But…its pretty much done and I’ve managed to stay upright and on the bounce.
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In case you havent spent enough money this year, this was brought to my attention in comments:

Battery stuff

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The consensus is pretty much universal: unless youre using lithium batts, your batteries are going to crap the bed and cost you your device.

Ii mention this because I just had to take two sets of slip-joint pliers to open the tailcap on a mini MagLite and you can imagine what the inside looked like. Fortunately, mini Maglites are not terribly expensive. But what if it was my GPS? Or my pocket radio? Or some other piece of expensive gear?

A while back I actually managed to catch a battery disintegration in progress.

It seems pretty clear that some sort of inspection is going to need to be performed on a somewhat regular basis for these items that have batteries left in them long-term. But, it also means I need to come up with a way to keep batteries at hand for when I don’t want to store them in the devices. Lets take the Siege lanterns that pretty much every one of you bought a few week back. Those take three D-batts. If I’m not going to keep them in the light, then i need to keep them nearby and I need to keep them protected. (And isolated from each other.) Tall order. Best thing I’ve seen thus far is this. Doesn’t seem to offer much elemental protection though. What I’d really like is something like this, but sized for D-batts. Is there such a thing? Dunno. I suppose the PVC minded might be able to create some sort of ‘cigar tube’ that holds three D-batts but I’d prefer a ready-made solution. In the meantime, while I quest for such a thing, I’m thinking a quarterly inspection schedule is going to have to be instituted..which means I need inspection tags for the devices. More work.But…whats it worth to have your gear work when you need it, right?

A quick addition to Evernote and I’ve got a checklist and a reminder to check batteries quarterly in..uhm..lets see….15 different devices.  We’ll see if this reduces the incidence of destroyed Maglites.

AK mag deal update

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I have a handful of people who have been invoiced for the AK mag deal but haven’t paid up yet. Guys, I know its the holidays but if those invoices stay open another day or two I’ll have to close them to make those magazines available for other people. If you told me you wanted mags and you received an invoice for them….well…ya gotta pony up or theyre gonna go to someone else.

Expecting to have them shipped out to you foresightful guys Wednesday.

Still want in? Room for a couple more bundles of mags if you wanna email me and get in on the action.

Pelican 1650 at ‘Zon

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A couple ridiculous sales on Amazon today…Pelican cases at really good prices including shipping, if you have Prime. These are the ‘trunk’-type cases. I use them for storing my winter survival vehicle gear, but they are also perfect for off-site storage at your resupply or secondary locations. The 1650 is the one I use. Since I’m stuffing it with a sleep system and a ton of other gear, I usually don’t get the foam insert, which brings the price down.

link – Sales of Guns and Ammo. What Could Ever Go Wrong?

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I swear, last one……..

And speaking of gun purchases that may come back to bite you in the buttocks, Claire has a post about something I was reading a few days ago. The article is behind a NYT paywall, but quick fingers with a ctrl+c managed to get me a copy of the article to paste into Word so I could read it. Here’s another outfits take on it.

The gist of the article is that mass shooters, according to the idiot writing the article, woldn’t be able to amass their ‘vast arsenals’ without the use of consumer credit. Therefore, banks should notify ‘the authorities’ when transactions show them buying ‘suspicious’ amounts of guns, ammo, etc.

Never mind that any person with two brain cells to rub together would figure out the easiest way to avoid that would be to buy ‘normal’ stuff on credit, resell it for cash, and then purchase with cash.

But, most importantly, who wants a bank reporting on your purchases to .gov? Cash, baby….thats why theyre trying to push you away from it. Cash makes no enemies. buy your guns without paperwork, for cash, and avoid the whole nonsense.

 

AK mags

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You guys remember this from six months ago? Well, a similar deal has arrived.

Last time was the Tapco Intrafuse 20-rd AK mags, 10/$100 inc. shipping.

Same deal, same price, but this time they are 30-rd mags in FDE/Desert/Beige/Coyote or whatever they call that sandy color these days.

So: Ten 30-rd mags for $100, delivered. Or, put another way, 50% more capacity for 0% more in price.

Ten of ’em fit in a Medium Flat Rate box, to all 50 states..including the usually-expensive-to-ship-to Hawaii and Alaska. Email me for an invoice you can pay online and start socking ’em away.

zero@commanderzero.com

 

Seasons Meatings

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Minding my own business, wandering through the meat department…….

Well…let’s see…thats $3.33/# at 50% off. So it’s really $1.67/#. But…27% fat means, in theory, you lose 27% of that in cooking… so you’re really paying $2.28/# for the actual meat you pull out of the oven. But, for beef, $2.28 is still a good deal. In reality, this is getting mixed with a bunch of 93/7 that was similarly marked down, resulting in an 85/15 blend which is what we normally use for burgers and the like. So…meatloaf. (and , yes, I know in practicality you don’t lose the whole % of fat when you cook it. I just like the numbers game.)

When it comes to animal protein, it turns out that chicken is usually the least expensive. Pork is next least. Beef is the most expensive unless you somehow have a hankering for lamb. As a result, I tend to not eat much beef except for cheeseburgers. However, I do love me some meatloaf and if I can get the meat on sale….meatloaf.

Normally I would say that this is all going in the freezer but I’ve decided to take advantage of the sub-freezing temps outside to move all the frozen food outside in milk rates and defrost my freezer (and organize it). So, thats definitely an agenda thing today.

I didn’t go hungry in 2018 and I’m going to try and keep that streak going in 2019. Sales like this let me do that.

And, finally, a few people kicked in a few bucks with the donation button and wished me a happy holiday. I appreciate it, and I thank you very much. Every little bit goes towards keeping the lights on here at the blog, as well as sometimes allowing me the purchase for a piece of gear to beat the crap out of. Im sure someone is going to chime in and say “…and Rugers”. Nope. I actually keep a pretty tight rein on blog income/expenses versus my own expenses. Any money that comes in goes to hosting, domain registration, backup software, that sort of thing. On the extremely rare occasions that donations actually exceed those needs, I usually mark it for things that I can review and bring the results to you guys.